This application claims the benefit of Korean Application Nos. 99-45962, filed Oct. 22, 1999 and 99-63313, filed Dec. 28, 1999, in the Korean Patent Office, the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a personal multi-media system, and more particularly, a method and apparatus for driving a particular peripheral device connected to a personal computer in a second power mode exclusive of a first power mode corresponding to a normal mode.
2. Description of the Related Art
In personal multi-media systems such as personal computers (PCs), turning on the system allows its central processing unit (CPU) to initialize the operating system (OS), and in turn to transmit commands to microcontrollers for controlling drives, thereby initializing operation of peripheral devices such as a hard disk drive, a floppy disk drive, an optical disk drive, and a printer. The initialization permits the use of application programs according to the use of each peripheral device, for example, playing of music by using the optical disk drive, or printing by using the printer.
Thus, common driving of peripheral devices is achieved by transmitting command data required to control drives of the devices to a microcontroller for controlling individual drives of the devices via a predetermined interface device. The interface device refers to a parallel-to-parallel interface device which allows parallel communications between the CPU and the microcontroller.
However, the problem with such a conventional peripheral device driving technique is that when a user intends to use a particular peripheral device attached to or connected to a PC, such as an optical disk drive, the OS and all the peripheral devices connected to the PC must first be initialized or mounted to drive the particular peripheral device the user desires to operate in a PC power ON state, which forces a user to wait for a longer period of time, and consumes a considerable amount of power by initializing all peripheral devices attached to the PC including unwanted devices.
To solve the above problems, it is an object of the present invention to provide a method of driving a particular peripheral device a user intends to operate in a second power mode exclusive of a first power mode corresponding to a normal state in a personal multimedia system.
It is another object of the present invention to provide a simple method of driving a particular peripheral device in a power-save mode or a software-off mode in a personal multimedia system.
It is still another object of the present invention is to provide an apparatus for driving a particular peripheral device a user intends to operate in a second power mode exclusive of a first power mode corresponding to a normal state in a personal multimedia system.
It is yet still another object of the present invention to provide an apparatus for driving a particular peripheral device in a power-save mode or software-off mode in a personal multimedia system.
Additional objects and advantages of the invention will be set forth in part in the description which follows and, in part, will be obvious from the description, or may be learned by practice of the invention.
An aspect of the present invention is achieved by a method of driving a peripheral device of a personal multimedia system having first and second power modes. The peripheral device driving method comprises: converting a selection of a function key selected by a user into command data corresponding to the selected function key in the second power mode by a first controller which is installed in the personal multimedia system to control the peripheral device; transmitting the command data by serial communications to a second controller for controlling the drive in the peripheral device; and decoding the command data by the second controller in the second power mode, to carry out the function indicated by the command data, wherein only the peripheral device a user intends to operate is operated in the second power mode. In the present invention, the first controller controls a peripheral device through a Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter instead of a central processing unit performing such a function.
Another aspect of the present invention is achieved by an apparatus for driving a peripheral device in a personal multimedia system interfacing with the peripheral device via a first interface device in a first power mode. The peripheral device driving apparatus comprising: a first controller installed in the personal multimedia system, to convert a selection of a function key selected by a user in a second power mode into command data corresponding to the selected function key; a second controller installed in the peripheral device, to decode the command data still in the second power mode to perform the function indicated by the command data; and a second interface device to transmit the command data from the first controller to the second controller for the peripheral device to operate in the second power mode.